"Nancy Kress - Wetlands Preserve" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

down molecules for energy, they utilized oxygen, they received chemical signals from other cells. Some
were total mysteries.
Lisa read the report once, twice. Then she went to stare at the snakers' cage, which was a mini-ecology
twelve feet by five, equipped with marsh areas, a pool, a dry hummock, stands of cattails and bulrushes,
aquatic plants and rocks and insects. Two of the three captive snakers had disappeared into the foliage.
The third one raised its head and looked back at her from a side-facing eye. Lisa stood gazing for a long
time.

"Lisa?" Stephanie said. "We're going out this afternoon on the boat to survey another sector. Want to
come?"

"Yes!" The Preserve had not been so thoroughly surveyed in years, now that everyone wanted to know
exactly how many of the alien creatures existed. A lot, it seemed. They bred quickly. Lisa went to finish
her water sample runs as quickly as possible so she would be able to go out on the boat.




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When she finally got home, muddy and exhausted and smelling of swamp, Danilo was there.
"How did you get in? The door was locked."

"Jimmied a window," he said in his liquid Filipino accent. "Not hard. God, Lissy, you look like a drowned
rat."

Lissy. His pet name for her. Which he goddamn well had no right to use. He lounged at the table in her
kitchen, which was also her living room and dining room, having helped himself to Raisin Bran and
English muffins. She said sourly, "You better be careful. That food probably has genetically modified
foodstuffs in it. You could sully your ideological purity."

"Same old Lissy." He sat up straighter, and the gleam of white teeth disappeared from his sunbrowned
face. Despite the heat, he wore jeans and heavy boots, the old uniform. A knapsack rested on the floor.
His trim body looked fit and rested, which only irritated her more. It had been so long since she'd had a
good night's sleep. Too much to do, always.

Danilo said quietly, "I want to see him."

"You don't have the right."

"I know. But I want to anyway. Carlo is my son."

"Only biologically. A hyena is a better father than you've been," Lisa said, and they were off again, the
same old track, sickening her even before they really got rolling.

"Only because I had a more urgent job," Danilo said, apparently willing to go over it all yet once more.
Lisa wasn't. He'd made his choices, and at the time Lisa had even seen why he'd made them, or thought
she had. The fate of the planet over the fate of a single child, the human race itself at stake, global
warming, depleted oceans, dangerous genetically engineered organisms released into the environment,